Hacking trial: evidence

The smoking gun email

Carry on hacking: nuggets from the trial

Monday 30 June, 2014
Martin Hickman has compiled two lists for Hacked Off of 20 "things we have learnt from the trial". They include:

Executives prepared exclusive stories in a “secret room” to prevent them being leaked by staff. It had solid walls, unlike the other glass offices, and was said to have been sound-proofed because Andy Coulson’s deputy Neil Wallis shouted so loudly;
Goodman said that rivalry between reporters was poisonous. He said that on learning that the paper’s “fake sheikh”, Mazher Mahmood, was about to expose a “top model” for being a prostitute, a journalist called her agent and tipped him off. The exclusive vanished.
When the Metropolitan Police raided a safe at News International’s Wapping HQ, they found micro-cassettes of 330 phone messages left by David Blunkett. Detective Constable Tim Hargreaves told the trial: “They are deeply personal and intrusive.”

The full lists can be seen here and here

Peter Jukes reported the entire trial in tweets and these can be seen on his Wordpress blog "Live tweeting the hacking trial".
The various stages of the case have been divided up and indexed, so that it is possible to see his tweets on particular lawyers' speeches and witness testimony.
His book on the trial is due to be published this month.

Runaway Milly factory story was nonsense, says Coulson

Tuesday 15 April, 2014 Andy Coulson didn't know that a team of reporters and photographers had been sent to Telford in the hope of finding Milly Dowler working in a factory, the former News of the World editor told the Old Bailey. He said the notion that she had left home to go to work in the Midlands was nonsense and the paper's view was that the missing teenager was probably dead.
Rebekah Brooks was the paper's editor at the time, but she was on holiday that week in April 2002 and Coulson, as her deputy, was in charge. The News of the World reported at the weekend that there had been a "new twist" to the hunt for Milly "after messages that had been sent to her mobile phone after she vanished". Coulson told the court that he did not remember the story, but that the absence of an "exclusive" or "News of the World investigation" might have suggested that it was the result of a police tip that had been given to several reporters. He said he was not aware of Milly's phone being hacked and if he had been told, his instinct would have been that it was wrong and an interference in a police investigation.
The story first appeared on page 9 of the paper, but was moved back to page 30 during the night after police suggested the job offer message was probably a "sick hoax".
Read more from the Telegraph

News of the World economics: £100k for private eye, £200k for an astrologer

Monday 14 April, 2014
Andy Coulson thought there was nothing special about a £105,000-a-year contract with a private investigator, the Old Bailey was told today. "It wasn't a lot of money in the business," he told the court. "We paid double that, I think, to the astrologer."
The former News of the World editor was speaking on his first day in the witness box at the court, where he denies conspiracy to hack phones and conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office.
Asked about plans to halve the payments to Glenn Mulcaire's private investigation company Nine Consultancy for "special inquiries", he said: "I assumed the description meant finding people, looking for people, possibly surveillance in the main and that Nine Consultancy was part of that process." It was not an area that he was particularly interested in.
Coulson also told the court that his on-off affair with his colleague Rebekah Brooks had been wrong and should not have happened, but that it had not affected their professional work.
Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World after Mulcaire was convicted of hacking Prince William's phone and later became David Cameron's director of communications. He resigned from that post when the hacking scandal blew up in 2011. Today he told the court that his family had spent a weekend with the Camerons shortly after that, but that they had not spoken since.
Read more from the BBC here

Brooks cleared of William charge

Thursday 20 February 2014

Rebekah Brooks was acquitted today of authorising a £4,000 payment to a public official for a photograph of Prince William in a bikini.
Judge Saunders instructed the Old Bailey jury to find Brooks not guilty, saying there was no case to answer. The photograph was never published.
Brooks, who begins her defence today, still faces charges of conspiracy to hack phones, conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and two of perverting the course of justice.
Yesterday the Old Bailey heard that Tony Blair had told Brooks to 'tough up' at the height of the phone-hacking scandal and offered to act as an informal adviser.
The jury was shown an email from Brooks to James Murdoch listing the key points of a telephone conversation she had had with Blair.
The email was dated July 11, 2011, the day News Corp's bid for control of BSkyB was referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and four days before Brooks was arrested.
According to the email, Blair told Brooks:

1. Form an independent unit that has an outside junior counsel, Ken Macdonald, a great and good type, a serious forensic criminal barrister, internal counsel, proper fact-checkers, etc in it. Get them to investigate me and others and publish a Hutton-style report.
2. Publish part one of the report at same time as the police closes its inquiry and clear you and accept your shortcomings and new solutions and process and part two when any trials are over.
3. Keep strong and definitely sleeping pills. Need to have clear heads and remember no rash short-term solutions as they only give you long-term headaches.
4. It will pass. Tough up.
5. He is available for you (James Murdoch), KRM (Rupert Murdoch) and me as an unofficial adviser but needs to be between us.
He is sending more notes later."